"PRIME WRAPPERS."
It was more than a year afterward. Quite a little village had grown
up around the church and school-house at Red Wing, inhabited by
colored men who had been attracted thither by the novelty of one
of their own members being a proprietor. Encouraged by his example,
one and another had bought parcels of his domain, until its size was
materially reduced though its value was proportionately enhanced.
Those who settled here were mostly mechanics--carpenters and
masons--who worked here and there as they could find employment,
a blacksmith who wrought for himself, and some farm laborers who
dreaded the yearly system of hire as too nearly allied to the slave
regime, and so worked by the day upon the neighboring plantations.
One or two bought somewhat larger tracts, intending to imitate the
course of Nimbus and raise the fine tobacco for which the locality
was already celebrated. All had built cheap log-houses, but their
lots were well fenced and their "truck-patches" clean and thrifty,
and the little hamlet was far from being unattractive, set as it
was in the midst of the green forests which belted it about. From
the plantations on either side, the children flocked to the school.
So that when the registering officer and the sheriff rode into
the settlement, a few days after the registration at Melton, it
presented a thriving and busy spectacle.
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